Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a
recent Yale graduate, moves into a small cottage on the west Egg of Long
Island, next to the luxurious mansion of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (Leonardo
DiCaprio), a man whom everyone seems to be talking about. He visits his cousin,
Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), and her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), wherein
he discovers that Tom is having an affair.
Soon, he is acting as go-between for
Daisy to have an affair as well when he sets up a re-acquaintance between Daisy
and Gatsby, who, it turns out, were lost loves, a lost love that Gatsby will do
anything to reclaim.
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic
novel, Luhrmann plays true to the story, but adds many of his signature flourishes.
The parties Gatsby throws are more vivid and opulent than anything the book
rendered, and the Jay-Z produced soundtrack contributes to the bombastic vibe
of the film. Music features prominently in painting the tone of the film, and
there are some inspired touches – Lana del Rey’s melancholy elegy “Will you
still love me” captures the essence of Fitzgerald’s book, and I particularly
liked the way the tune was played throughout at the key dramatic moments. “100$
bills”, a song by Jay-Z himself, is another good one, which features when
Gatsby and Nick visit a clandestine club hidden behind a barbers, and it
definitely adds to the MTV-style cool that Luhrmann does so well.
Luhrmann has commandeered
some movies with sensational soundtracks – Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! come
to mind, but featuring beautiful songs from Florence and the Machine, Beyonce (who collaborates with Andre 3000 on a chilling cover of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black),
and The White Stripes, The Great Gatsby could just be his magnum opus in the
aural stakes.
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The
Great Gatsby in 1925, it was his personal indictment of the American dream and
the corruption and hedonism it evoked. Much of this is epitomised in the lead
female, Daisy Buchanan, who stays with her rich husband despite him having
multiple “sprees” which she knows about, having an affair of her own, and
forgoing the love of her life when he was penniless.
Carey Mulligan isn’t an
actress I’m particularly fond of, but she does a solid job in one of the most
thankless of female roles, albeit injecting Daisy with more depth than she perhaps merits. Apparently, Daisy Buchanan was partially modelled on
Fitzgerald’s own wife, Zelda, so I think the idea is that for all her many
flaws, we’re not supposed to see Daisy as the complete goldigger that she is.
It is thanks to the gravitas of Mulligan’s performance that she halfway manages
to convey that, albeit being a tad too serene.
As Nick, Tobey Maguire is the embodiment
of an active narrator. In the novel, more actually happens to him; he dates
Jordan Baker, the attractive celebrity golfer and Daisy’s confidante, but such
is the time constriction of the film that that is more of a plot device than an
actual plot development here. Maguire is admirable, and features some of that
amicable goofy smile that he sported in his early stages of Peter Parker when
he was learning the ropes as Spiderman. But the MVP of the performers in the
film is, as with Django Unchained, Inception and various other films which I
was disappointed with overall, Leonardo DiCaprio.
Robert Redford also tackled the
famous Jay Gatsby role, but he seemed too mature for the role, and lacked one
crucial element, optimism, in his performance. DiCaprio has that in spades,
to the point where it exasperates the audience, and paints his character as a
deluded sap, who would do anything for his lost love, even when she doesn’t
deserve him.
We, as the audience, share Nick’s frustration when, late on in the
film, Gatsby accepts the blame for a pretty big error committed by Daisy, just
because he doesn’t want her to get into trouble. It seemed pretty inconceivable
when I read it in the book, but somehow, DiCaprio manages to make his hapless
hopefulness seem believable.
The supporting cast are also
good, with particular commendations having to go to Jason Clarke, who plays the
perennial deadbeat, George Wilson with so much conviction that you really do
feel for the fella. I also liked stage actress Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan, who
featured the kind of languid poise that I pictured from her when reading the
book. I was very surprised to discover after watching the film that Debicki was
only 22 years old, as in the film she more than holds her own against the more
seasoned auteurs.
I feel that the screenplay,
whilst delivering pretty much all the action the novel had, scrimps on the
message Fitzgerald was trying to convey. He meant it as a damning condemnation
of the roaring 20s and particularly the “carelessness” that Tom and Daisy
exhibit. Whilst this is still present in parts of Maguire’s voice-over, I feel
that Luhrmann forgoes the deepness for storytelling. Which I can’t altogether
fault him for, as storytelling is definitely his forte, but I just feel that
perhaps there was so much style in The Great Gatsby that he forgot about the
substance of his source material altogether.
For all the luscious cinematography, inspired costume design (loved the flapper dresses)
and fantastic soundtrack, there was something lacking about Baz Luhrmann’s
colouring of Fitzgerald’s novel. Despite the actors’ best efforts, the central
romance simply wasn’t convincing enough for us to believe in it, meaning that,
whilst The Great Gatsby was a wonderful cinematic experience, emotionally, it
left me feeling as empty as one of Jay Gatsby’s parties.
5/10
